At the request of some of my players, I'm going to begin keeping and posting a GM log of our Amber Diceless Roleplaying Campaign, which I have named All My Sins Remembered. I think that they mainly want to have another chance to try to weasel information out of me.
Alright, then, they can try. The focus is going to be my thoughts and postmortem analysis (that ought to worry them) of each game session, showing how I feel each game went, what I decide on the fly as opposed to what I've scripted, and how the players surprise me. I'm going to keep any spoilers out of it, although I may make reference to character information that is not widely known by the PCs. It has been decided by my players that full disclosure of their character backgrounds and powers is not necessarily a bad thing, as the group is generally able to keep player knowledge nicely separated from character knowledge.
For any other actual or potential Amber GMs out there, I'm going to be talking about some of the problems I've faced in the course of the game, and the things that I try to solve them. It may help someone out there avoid the mistakes that I make. Conversely, if anyone has advice that may help me with something that's got me stumped, please let me know. You can e-mail me at grendel@mts.net.
Iím also going to point out what was the highlight of each session for me, and what I think was the biggest problem point. These are, of course, only my opinion.
First of all, let me talk about the character creation. I gave each player 100 points to start, and allowed up to 30 points of contributions. On top of that, I provided a character quiz of ten questions, with an award of one extra point per question answered. Total potential points were 140.
Only one of the characters had read the rules, so I did up an information package for everyone, listing the basics of character creation. One thing I decided to do was to not reveal the abilities gained by taking an advanced form of a power to anyone but the person who took it. That lets me customize the abilities granted for each character, and keeps the rest ignorant about the abilities of the true masters of a power.
Thatís right, Iím not using any sort of partial power system, even though that seems to be the most popular modification of the rules on the net. I just didnít want to get that granular with things.
The game is set 15 years after Merlin has taken the Throne of Chaos. Characters have all been born in the interim, although they may be much older in subjective time. They have never known Oberon, the Patternfall War is ancient history, and the peace between Amber and Chaos, while it has some opponents on both sides, continues to bring prosperity through trade and the exchange of ideas. Characters are from both ends of the spectrum, although they each have a tie to Amber. All are children of someone in Corwinís generation.
I have discarded the idea of Undershadow from the Merlin saga, although I may change my mind on that if I feel the story needs it. I donít really see that happening.
Of the characters, only one decided to take Pattern Imprint. That surprised me a great deal, and surprised the other players as well. Everyone seemed to think that everyone else would be taking Pattern Imprint, so they avoided it. So now Iíve got two Trump Artists, two Logrus Initiates, a Broken Pattern Initiate, and a Pattern Initiate.
This is the largest group Iíve run since I was in high school, doing the epic AD&D dungeon crawls with ten people in a group. Amber is a far more demanding game, both in terms of required prep time and in terms of individual interaction, Iím expecting a learning curve both on my part and on the part of the players. Iíll let you know how things work out.